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Monday, April 9, 2012

Advisory: This entry may contain several Christian references and practices that may be unfamiliar to readers, but are welcome to read and understand.

Holy Week has come and gone, and we are again reminded of how much was sacrificed to save what remains of our faith and continue on learning how to live by it. But as the long weekend has passed, I have arguably spent a good amount of my non-working 5 day vacation sitting in front of the computer (or cellphone thanks to WiFi) either finishing up other projects, playing games or surfing the internet. And in the internet is where I would mostly try to figure out the world around me and how things have progressed as time passes by.

I'm sure you've stumbled into this picture before (see left). This picture and what it triggered has intrigued me for the past two days. It was spreading like wildfire in Facebook and other social media. And the comments ranged from pity to fire-and-brimstone flaming.

"what's great with those pictures? all I can see was full of thrases with people there disrespecting our God. They don't even know what they were doing and yet they are having a good time. Such worthless creatures that doesn't deserve God's Love."

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. More so with those posting in the cosplay community where I'm in, and the posts were as unflattering as what I just mentioned here. Honestly I felt shock when I saw this picture, but kept quiet because I wanted to know how exactly did this happen. Eventually I stumbled upon the Facebook album where it originated and also read an online article describing the event and eventually concluded that the cross was actually part of a tourist attraction in Angeles, Pampanga for photo ops.

I felt sad how much internet culture has permitted us to spread news like wildfire and post comments without any thought of consequence. Many have already condemned the woman for violating our religious icon by posing sexily for photos, without giving any thought of why she did it. Is she even Catholic? Is she local? A foreigner who knew no better? Why isnt anyone surrounding her stopping her from climbing up the cross and be photographed? And why are there several pictures of other people doing the same thing?

Questions no doubt will probably be answered soon, thanks to our local media finally getting hold of the story. I hear it was already featured on TV. And the contents actually, in their own little way, lectured to those who callously called the woman a sinner, hypocrite, disbeliever and such, to take time to look into themselves and ask how pure their intentions were in the first place. Which makes me wonder how selective we are in determining which is considered blasphamous and which is considered tolerable, particularly in the anime and cosplay community.

Tokyo Babylon Cross Fashion

Cross-motiff gun to destroy a lot of things

Rei chained to cross in sexy dress. Nuff said.

And I'm pretty sure even popular artists are very much into these things.

Or some might call, Gaga on a Stick.

Madonna, obviously not singing "Like a Virgin"

So at the end of the day, I often wonder if i'm the only one who seems strange enough to say that somehow, these images don't disturb me enough to make me go raging over the internet. Is it because I have a good sense of humor? A sizable level of tolerance? Or because I'm pretty much jaded by what's been going on these days? Probably a little of everything. But once in a while I always thought that we are all very much human in so many ways, that I am reminded that perhaps God designed us that way, so that in the end we would realize our mistakes and move on to become better human beings.